Houston's office market makes small gains in Q1

HOUSTON - April 11, 2019 - PRLog -- Houston's office market continues to slowly improve, filling vacant space emptied during the energy downturn. In Q1 2019, the market posted positive absorption of 724,000 SF, a substantial increase from the negative 1.2 million SF of absorption recorded one year ago. Leasing activity decreased over the quarter from 5.1M SF to 2.8M SF. Houston's overall vacancy rate fell slightly from 19.8% to 19.5% over the quarter, but is still well above Houston's pre-downturn average vacancy rate in 2014 of 11.6%.
Construction activity remained the same at 2.5M SF as developers continue to show constraint by holding off on proposed projects. Only 100,000 SF delivered during Q1 2019 and only 50,000 SF is in the pipeline scheduled to deliver next quarter.
Houston's job growth increased by 2.4% over the year, according to recent data released by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. The Houston MSA created 72,600 jobs (not seasonally adjusted) between February 2018 and February 2019, growing faster than... Read the full report here: https://s3.us-east-2.amazonaws.com/colliershouston/2019+Market+Reports/2019-Q1-Office-Houston-Report-Colliers.pdf